Onder Invloed is a project by Dutch journalist Matthijs van der Ven. The title means ‘under the influence’. Since June 16th 2008, he filmed numerous international musicians covering their favourite songs in sessions and at Onder Invloed live shows. His first book, Onder Invloed, was published in 2012.

Aaron Livingston can hear the different places he's lived in his songs and he doesn't shy away from political topics, although written from his personal perspective. The LP has very quickly become a personal favourite for me.

Until about a year ago, my life was a little worse than it is now, if only because I had not yet gotten acquainted with folk singer Alistair Ogilvy's music. I looked up his second record July Moon, produced by Admiral Fallow's Louis Abbott, and got hooked by his impressive voice.

It’s a small crime that nowhere near enough people know Small Houses’ latest LP Still Talk; Second City yet. Nowhere near enough people are enjoying this record by Jeremy Quentin – who recently moved to Austin, Texas. He writes lyrics better than most songwriters I know and has got a voice to sing them as...

About four or five years ago I was a judge for one of The Netherland’s biggest alternative music competition ‘De Grote Prijs van Nederland’, in the singer songwriter category. One of the musicians that made an immediate impression, I believe on all of the judges, was Yori Swart. She played the guitar better than most,...

Back in 2010 I met Lori Lieberman for the first time, in Amsterdam where we filmed her first session for this site. Five years later I invited her back for another, to celebrate the release of her 17th record Ready For The Storm. She recorded the title-track and a Tom Paxton cover.

It was a rainy night in Glasgow when I hijacked Biff Smith’s computer to play him some Dutch songs. Knowing the A New International singer’s love for French music, I put on Ramses Shaffy, who was one of The Netherlands’ most famous singers. Little did I know I would end up a few years later...

There used to be a time when certain Dutch people would look down on Dutch bands, and considered any band from abroad to be automatically better and more interesting. Obviously that’s a rather stupid attitude, and especially these days we have nothing to complain about. There are good bands wherever you look. One of them...

Remember when we used to find out about new musicians on television? Well, I got to know Ryan O’Reilly through some videos I found on YouTube while searching for videos of another Ryan. Lucky me. Three videos later I saw he had a show in Amsterdam coming up and this session got planned.